


let’s pretend we’re on our own

by isoldewas



Series: like you know him [2]
Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: F/M, Midge and Susie are basically dating, a divorce AU, feat. Lenny as both Lenny and Joel, what is a timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 10:43:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20795357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoldewas/pseuds/isoldewas
Summary: When he wants to leave, he walks past Midge and his fingers are almost on her arm when he remembers. He can’t say “Let’s go home,” he can’t say “Let’s get away from here.” Where would they go: he doesn’t belong with her anymore.No more Midge.(divorce au)





	let’s pretend we’re on our own

**Author's Note:**

> and yeah he’ll be called lenny here, don’t @ me

“My husband, the comedian,” that’s how Midge always went about it. 

Somewhere, he is sure, he knew what it meant. Even if the temporary nature of the title went unnoticed at first, what with the engagement and the wedded bliss, it stuck with him. As it absolutely should have. Midge would say “Here he is, my-husband-the-comedian,” all in one word, like it was better than a name, like with that for a title he didn’t need one. Carefully crafted around Midge and that scandalous occupation of his, it didn’t bother taking Lenny into account. And so, when the title was revoked, none of it came as a surprise.

Midge was sitting in the kitchen, holding a joint between her two fingers, legs crossed, skirt hiked up to her knees. There was a metaphor to it. To the kitchen, to the joint and to her, there, waiting. He didn’t know the punchline, but he recognized the setup.

Lenny approached her carefully and took a hit. He can’t remember whether he sat down before she told him "I don't think," they locked eyes, "We can keep doing this.”

The thing is— She split it in two. An _I don't think,_ like an answer to wherever they left the conversation in the morning. And then, unrelated: _we can keep doing this though: weed, kitchen, this nice thing we’ve got going, anything;_ anything really, he wants to keep going, can't allow himself to stop: he'll stop and he'll hear it again in his head, and he'll know then. It's over.

At least now he was in on the joke. He took another hit and wandered off into the living room with the joint still in his hand.

Now that he knows it's ending, it's exactly how he would’ve wanted to remember her when at the very brink of them. And that's exactly what Midge offered him.

He just never thought he’d miss Rose.

Rose Weissman wasn’t thrilled with Lenny Bruce.

That’s how she got to meet him: with Midge announcing they were getting married and then, later, Midge explaining what a _comedian_ was. Lenny stood there, careless, reluctant to believe this here would change much. He should have known. Midge didn’t even mention he was famous, that would’ve added up to the damage.

He should have fucking known.

No, you know what, strike that. He saw Rose earlier. She’s got that face that’s very difficult not to notice. She stands out, she did among his crowd, a face of indignation and then surprise when she felt a smile tug at the corner of her lip. 

Lenny noticed her, noticed she reminded him of Midge, which— no shit. Midge wasn’t there that night, so he could never confirm or deny. Whenever he tried to bring it up with Rose she’d squint her eyes, purse her lips. Every time she’d convince Lenny that no, she really didn’t know Midge had a man and the man was a comedian. But then Rose would smile and Lenny’d recognize her, again and again.

She didn’t come clean, not before Midge’s big “I’m marrying him,” not after. And Lenny hoped that maybe it was her giving him permission. Which was kind of a blessing. Which was kind of sad.

After the wedding, he moved to the Upper West Side.

When it came to people in their fancy apartments, throwing parties and attempting to strike up a conversation, Lenny was usually quite drunk. He could go on about the linings and how charming the newly-elected politicians were and the way Midge could braise a brisket. And he could allow himself to not wonder about the why and the what and the _how the fuck will it ever work._

Some people were looking for an explanation instead of an introduction. They only talked to Midge, glancing over to him, like they haven't read about the scandalous union on the social pages and called in immediately to confirm. Coming home, they’d say to each other “I’ve met the Weissman's’ son-in-law,” like he was a theatre piece off-off-Broadway they were discussing.

Midge had done the explaining since the first party they attended and she is still doing it now. Lenny doesn’t get why she would bother today of all things.

Today is Margaret’s and Arthur’s wedding anniversary.

Today is also the beginning of the filing for the divorce part. It’s the _ get out of my house, _ the _ this was bought with my money _ part. They have yet to announce it to Midge’s parents. He thinks it buys them a little time before they absolutely have to become hateful people who say things like that.

All of this is very recent. It hasn’t settled well in his mind yet, and it isn’t helped much by the parties they continue to attend, things Midge didn’t dare cancel. 

She presented Lenny with a calendar a few days ago: an array of things they’ve already said yes to. Lenny looked up from the dates and said _sure, let’s._ The Upper West Side had yet to make a polite man of him (and would never get the chance now), but Midge was asking and— and he didn’t know how to say no to her yet. 

No one notices anything. Sure, Midge doesn’t whisper things in his ear and Lenny spends the time drinking gin on his own, but no one says anything to either of them. It bothers him that what feels like the end of fucking everything could go unnoticed by so many.

Among the things that he actually likes about the parties are the open bar and the strangers. After four years in the neighborhood, there’re still those who have no idea who Lenny Bruce is. If they talk to him, it’s about the weather and the latest gossip and he lies through his teeth as he always did, his own sort of entertainment. He goes for it that much harder as it might be the last time he’ll be able to confuse the hell out of them.

He tells Arthur’s sister that Jeannie Armstrong is pregnant and that’s why she’s divorcing Michael and is getting with Ted. It’s all lies, lies, lies but he hates these people. He hates Ted and despises Michael. Sure, he likes Jeannie well enough but at the moment she’s talking to Midge and the thing is: Jeannie can talk to her and Lenny can’t. Here and everywhere else, his wife belongs more to Jeannie and Jeannie’s world than she does to him and his punchlines. Lenny goes on lying and asks for a refill.

When he wants to leave, he walks past Midge and his fingers are almost on her arm when he remembers. He can’t say “Let’s go home,” he can’t say “Let’s get away from here.” Where would they go: he doesn’t belong with her anymore.

He wants to go home. It used to be simple. Now it’s a product of an over-exhausted mind, a result of a boring evening, a testament to how forgetful he can be. The thing he calls home doesn’t exist anymore.

No more Midge.

So why yell. Why bother. They are exhausted. They are going to be entangled in the divorce proceedings of the year: Midge and her no-good husband, Miriam Weissman finally coming to her senses.

It’s just that fighting always seemed foolish. When they did, they ended up remembering how ridiculous it all was: the napkins, the money, the girl who tried to stick her tongue down his throat. Where they couldn’t meet on their own they didn’t dare mend, and everything else was always fine. Until it was breaking and neither of them knew what to do about it. When neither of them dared to touch it and it broke.

This is how they got into this, this is exactly why they are getting out.

But if he had to fit it into a coherent account, he’d start with the shard of glass in her hand.

“No, no, this,” she says, a piece of glass between her middle and index fingers, “this is very you.”

Lenny sits down on the floor next to her, sweeping away the damage with the kitchen towel. Midge is leaning back against the wall, and he does that too, throws back his head and exhales loudly.

She cut her foot on a piece of glass lying on his floor. They got back to his place and Lenny didn’t want to show her around, didn’t want to show her anything at all. He didn’t reach for a switch. Midge left her heels near the door and he forgot he’d left broken glass lying around in the hallway until he heard her swear under her nose.

_This is very you,_ and he doesn’t know how she means for it to land. He knows now though, as the four years of a shared life begin to unravel.

She meant he didn’t care. “Of course you don’t care, you are a man,” she’d said to him after a date or a night or a drink or after she noticed a stain on his suit. 

“I am a comedian,” he’d said. “Why would you think I don’t care?”

Lenny thinks that’s exactly when he won her over. Much later than the first time he saw her or the first time he’d talked to her, and certainly not with his hand on her thigh— to be fair, all three kind of overlapped. 

After a gig, he went to the bar and she was sitting there with someone.

Lenny missed it when they walked out. He just remembers how she came back and ordered them a round, just her and Lenny.

She leaned on a bar counter and said “You made me laugh,” like it was praise, a compliment, and an honor. She was also folding a napkin in weird shapes, unsure of the next angle, and Lenny looked at her fingers in the first few minutes of their meeting each other. And then he looked at her mouth.

Could he have thought then, _I’ll have her for years and then I won’t want her and when I wouldn’t want her, she won’t want me and just like that I’ll want her again._

If he knew he would have walked away. He’s glad the time doesn’t do that, doesn’t go back on itself and allows foolishness to steal away the years. 

It was nice then. He had just learned her name, was memorizing the color of her hair. She smiled bright and open and confident. They ended up in the street, his hands under her dress.

Midge gasped and her voice moved up a pitch and then higher still. He got away from her to be able to see her face. Lenny had no idea how to read her: it was like the second expression of hers he ever saw, but on anybody else, it would’ve been a surprise. Like she didn’t expect him to be good at this too. 

He thinks that’s where she had him.

In between the calls from his divorce lawyer and booking his next week, Lenny desperately tries to find where it all began.

He searches for the deviation points. Maybe if they never met. Maybe if they were different people.

Meeting today they wouldn’t even like each other.

Bullshit, though. He knows in every one of their hypothetical meetings, again and again, he’d joke and she’d laugh and he’d be done right there. And once he hears her moan there is no turning back, that is fucking it.

“I’d hate you if I didn’t like you,” he once said, slurring his words, trying to walk in a straight line. Or maybe she did. Not the point, so not the point, the point being: he doesn’t hate her. Maybe she still likes him. Maybe there will never come a time where they’ll go all desperate and terrible _(“get out of my house,” “don’t you dare take my vinyl”)._ But then again— 

Not the fucking point.

They have both shifted exactly enough so as not to fit anymore. And he can disguise it in all sorts of nice words and she can go around putting it out there via punchlines, but that is all there is to that.

The very first night she isn’t there anymore, Lenny gets arrested. It’s done and she’s gone and he ends up in jail.

It’s the fourth time. He can’t decide whether the number would be higher or lower were it not for her. Once, he is sure, she talked a police officer out of an arrest. More than once Lenny himself consciously decided not to, while on stage. He’d look at her among the crowd and think, _home._ And then he wouldn’t say what he rehearsed. 

No. No, you know what, scratch that too.

He started _writing_ in _versions_.

It had happened in waves. He thought of a line. Written down on a piece of paper, it seemed groundbreaking. Up on stage, Midge’s face in the crowd, words were dominos, capable of destroying Weissman' wealth and Midge’s reputation. He’d change it up. He’d go easy.

But then on certain nights Lenny drank too much and went for the Pope and the three-legged duck. Ended up in prison and thought _worth it._ When Midge drove him back home, he couldn’t stop talking. Couldn’t allow for her to interrupt and express her disappointment. Words running out of him, he sat there, considering.

After that, in a matter of days, he snapped out of their wedded bliss. Very fast, very real, a car crash, but less entertaining. All of a sudden, it all just felt— empty. Like he didn’t have anything else to give or even take.

Lenny walked down the hallway and into the carefully decorated rooms of their apartment. The big kitchen, the pictures Midge put up on the wall. The space he knew so well. It started crushing around him.

So he took Midge out. They saw a movie. 

She asked him “Where do you want to go next?” and they went home. Midge reached for his belt as they came in. Lenny’s hands landed on her hips. That’s what they always did.

And all he thought was, _is this it. How was it ever worth it?_

_Four years and there’s not going to be a fifth._

Their bed felt like a prison, what with its four corners and its clean sheets. Everything in that apartment belonged to them. It was his but it wasn’t.

Lenny didn’t say it then, but he did say it a few days later. “I can’t think in versions anymore.” _You need to leave._

He didn’t tell her about what the versions meant. She didn’t ask. No one left.

But every word he’d replaced eventually found its way back. They would break out of him in his fights with Midge, a Freudian slip he’d recognize immediately. _Oh, so that’s what this is about._

But now that’s over. They’re over and he winds up in the police car when, would you believe it, Midge lands right next to him.

He looks at her, again and again.

The strands of her hair, the tipped up edge of her mouth when she starts smiling, and then she’s laughing, laughing like it’s the funniest thing in the whole world. And Lenny thought they were all out of happy firsts. 

Really, it’s an obvious turn of events. Both of them drunk, both of them angry at a different part of Manhattan. There is an _of course, _ Midge managed to get past her fit, he hears it, can’t hear anything but her.

His eyes trail off her mouth to her shut eyes to her arched neck. She throws her head back and taps the flat of her hand on her knee, like one half of applause to the irony. She has yet to open her eyes and look at him.

And at that moment it’s very difficult to imagine that they’ve grown apart. They both got to the stage that night, saying outrageous things. It seems like maybe they should do something about all that. And she does.

Resigned, Midge opens her eyes, a soft smile, a dangerous look. She looks at him like maybe she wants to fuck him. 

She moves her hand toward him, and on his lap. Her eyes are wide and her face is slow and how drunk is she. There is an officer near the bar, his back turned to the car, not that Midge checked. She is rubbing her hand against his thigh, unphased, like it’s all going according to plan.

Like having said “I don’t think we can do it anymore” had exalted her of guilt. So now she can do it all over again.

No, but he is being unkind. She has lost a husband today.

The first time he set foot into the Weissman’s home, Midge introduced him to the help. There was some sort of recognition in Zelda’s eyes though he didn’t think she’d heard of Lenny Bruce. She might have heard the name, though. Midge might have mentioned him.

Her room was pink, lost in the endless corridors. Lenny watched her sprint across the apartment, checking up on her party preparations. He couldn’t put it together, how she could be from here and then set foot in filthy places downtown. And then appreciate it as she did.

Even the broom closet turned out to be nice. That’s where she kissed him, pushed him into the door and left a stain of lipstick on his collar. He was very proud of it when he finally noticed.

Someone must have bailed her out in the long hours of the night because in the morning she’s there to bail him out. 

“You’re not my wife,” he says, aiming for matter of fact. It comes out pained and awkward. Midge tilts her head, _nope. I am not._ Her smile wavers. _Yet here I am._

They walk out and onto the street. There is a taxi waiting. Midge halts and turns around. “I-“ 

Lenny smiles, “You?”

There is something unforgiving about the set of her jaw, the eyes, the frown. “I don’t know what to do.”

He wants to say so many terrible things. It comes easy to him, no deep digging, nothing, it’s there already. The hurt, the blame, the boredom. Her mouth half open and he notices the red lipstick. Her hair flows in an elegant shape, the green hat matching her dress perfectly. She could hurt him too, right here, right now. He decides to skip all that cruelty. 

This whole thing is just a reaction. A habit. An almost tradition that makes him put his arms around her. It’s a default response hardwired over the past few years: instinctively knowing what should be done about her sadness even if he still doesn’t know what to do with his own. 

There is an idea to this: he could have been better. He should have done better. The idea is voiced by Abe, mimicking Rose’s inflections, dragging syllables as Midge would.

He hugs her tighter and: everything is still in place. Maybe this is the way around his sadness. Everything fits like it always did with them, a small comfort given their current situation. _Can’t we go on like this,_ he wants to plead. _I can manage half a life._

He’s got a whole speech prepared. It’s not like they didn’t have it coming, one of them was bound to give up. It’s just that Lenny always imagined he’d be the first one to bail out.

Midge settles. She’s never settled for anything, nothing, except when it comes to the separation of property in their negotiations. Her lawyer’s office is bright and shiny, and there is a view to die for, well worth the trip to the twenty-sixth floor. One of the men is smoking, the smoke rising in spirals, up and up, and to the vent. Lenny too wants out of there.

Midge walks in and he almost expects Rose and Abe to follow. She wants to be done with it quickly, everything about her irritated and a little rushed.

She knows the ins and outs of this, it seems, maybe not the divorce, but the papers and the politeness and the how-to-win. Lenny sits there, picturing sets of furniture, trying very hard to care. Any moment now.

She looks younger than she did this whole year. She’s fun even in this scenario, snarky, inappropriate and impolite, glad her mother can’t see her now, ending it in the same spirit of _fuck it_ as when she started it. She’s young and fun and rich. Even as Lenny gets more out the divorce than he should, that is to say, something and not nothing, she is still rich, and there is a part of him that hates how easy she has it.

Everything Lenny takes away with him, she’ll just replace. Even him, she’d just pick someone, easy, like settling on a color or a fabric or a hat. She’ll be her parent’s daughter again in no time.

Except that’s exactly when she decides to try the comedy.

He wanders into one, okay, maybe several of her sets. That’s how he learns how she’s doing. That’s how everyone in New York learns where they are.

And by comparison that’s how he tracks where he’s at.

Midge’s reenacting a fight they had in front of a drunk crowd. She doesn’t seem to hide who she used to be married to, uses words like “gig” and “obscenities” when talking about what her would-be-ex-husband does for a living. But she is also different with it.

It’s like a rough cut of everything they’ve been through. Lenny plays such a minor role in a story that’s supposed to be about him, and when she says “What a dick,” he chuckles along with everyone else. At this point, he’s four scotches in and she is shiny under the harsh light of the single projector. She’s brilliant.

He searches feverishly for something else to hold on to and remembers her on the floor of his apartment, bandaging the cut. There she is in the shadows, a streak of light across her face and an ouch on her lips. She fumbles with her dress and says “You don’t care like I do.” Says it quietly, all this history captured in so many words.

And what’s wrong with him that he can’t keep the woman who was told and told and told she was supposed to be a wife. But then that was never her. This is her, on stage, bright and over-sharing.

_Did I do this to you?_ And he finds, _no._ She is her own. 

He thinks, almost hopeful: maybe what wasn’t right about him was necessary. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who miserably failed to live up to the Weissmans.

Midge doesn’t go for easy laughs. She’s sharp with her words, careless but precise. She’s biting at the truth, showing off pieces to the audience. Really, she should be screaming at him. Instead, she’s just turning their awkwardness into laughter on stage, like that’s what should be done about it. When she’s done with her set, there is a squall of applause and Lenny too is applauding politely, doesn’t dare make a show of it.

He swallows the remains of his drink and walks out. He doesn’t know how to stay.

He walks into another bar and orders the same drink, watches it appear in front of him and stay there. He thinks, if you try hard enough, there is a metaphor to that too. It appears and stays. Although, Midge didn’t just appear, and he, he didn’t stay.

That’s what bothers him the most, he realizes: she has established a coherent narrative. Lenny finds himself in the very middle of this mess yet Midge is on the outside. Maybe if they were both lost, it would get easier. 

In his sets, he’s still afraid to touch on it. It’s all he sees. When looking in the mirror— mostly though, because it’s their mirror, it’s her comb there, it’s their apartment he can’t move out of, because where would he go.

He’s still living there, like in a castle under siege only no one is taking his keys away. Abe and Rose never asked him to move out.

Legally it’s theirs. The Weissmans just gave up after Midge moved into Lenny’s flat: after four days her parents bought them an apartment. Because of course, they did. Lenny’s sure, mostly because people have told him so, repeatedly, that at that point he was supposed to feel terrible at life. Having a wedding paid by the in-laws is fine, whatever, people waved dismissively at that, hurried to get to their real point. But having a wife and not having a place is ridiculous, and he'll never be able to provide, ever.

Not that it weighed on him. Not that he noticed it did until he was two and a half years in and it was Abe who told him “You'll never be able to provide, ever.” Lenny froze for a second: okay. Okay. He could live with that. 

And then he laughed in Abe’s face.

It used to be easy. He wanted her, she wanted him and it was a far cry from a decision.

They collided right as they were, pretty and young, and pretty damn young to get into what from the heights of his looming divorce he calls a first marriage.

Now, what’s funny about calling it a first is the idea that there might be more of the same. Like there is something after the fallout. Like there is something left, like Lenny didn’t use up everything to ruin what they had.

He thinks, and he thinks about it a lot, that if there was a part of him capable of building a new thing from the ground up, there isn’t a chance he wouldn’t use it to salvage what remains between them.

It’s just that— They tried. They are tired.

She’s still his favorite person in the whole of the US and he would always get in fights with her. Like it was her fault he was still broke and her family was still rich, like the fact that they don’t have kids and never got around to visiting Paris. 

And it’s not like there was something about Paris. It’s just that Rose would sit across from him and talk about her university days. About the freedom and the speeches and the food and the people. Like it was something she didn't want to grow out of. Like it made her both jealous and mad that she belonged to the Upper West Side and Lenny didn’t.

Lenny wanted to go. If Rose was a different person there, imagine what it’d do to him. What Paris would do to Midge. Being so out of place you just have to become someone else. Someone new and happy. 

That’s exactly how Midge looks in a bar, sitting across from Susie, the pair of them tipsy, slow. Happy.

Lenny knows all about the incorrigible differences. But he also sees how close to each other they are sitting and the look on Susie’s face. He knows that look. He doesn’t want to ruin that. He’s still carefully avoiding Midge. 

He ducks his head and moves away from them, but she notices. Just like him, she can’t help herself. “Oh, and this is him,” Midge waves for him to come closer.

He pulls a chair next to them. It’s a round table, thank god, he’s in no way prepared to consider whether he should or shouldn’t sit next to Midge.

Susie is a weird mixture of star-struck and resentful. Midge asks him an easy question, a kind of small talk that doesn’t require real answers, so he doesn’t give her any. He fumbles for a cigarette, and then for a light when Susie comes to his rescue.

A few more minutes of Midge’s chatter and Susie starts to put her jacket on. She squints her eyes at Lenny before she leaves, brushes Midge’s shoulder with her hand.

“She’s good?” he asks, Susie possibly still within earshot.

Midge chuckles and her eyes drop to the floor, and it’s like she has too much to say on the subject. Like it’s a private joke she can’t move on from. She traces a line on the table, her finger with no ring on it. Times like this, she is so honest, he doesn't get why some things she hides.

“I’d be an embarrassment to anyone else. A woman comedian, a disaster.“

He drags his eyes from her hands on the table to her face.

“No, Midge, you’re good,” he says on the exhale, smoke blurring her out of his vision. She’d given him years of Upper West Side, he gave her every dirty bar around Midtown. They didn’t share a life, she pulled him into hers and he did the same to her. Lenny clears his throat. He looks at her curls, pearls. Neck. The image of domestic bliss that’s not good anymore, but that’s absolutely, ridiculously good in and of itself.

He backs down from the dangerous reference of their shared past and compliments her act instead.

She has a lot to say about that. From “which one did you see” to “it’s the best” to “it’s the worst.” He listens and he laughs and he knows what she means.

He recognizes the other thing too.

Them drinking together, home, her legs in his lap, an idyllic image that he lived through and through: he had it and he lost it and he thinks, he’s good with words, he could find the right structure and bring her back.

He starts talking: opens his mouth and says her name, low, unrelated. Watches her face twist into something else, something different, something that means it’s working. And Lenny goes on, a sentence, a word; he should stop before she actually believes him.

That idyllic thing feels like a trap. He’s been there. It won’t fucking work. She shakes her head.

“I think,” she says, “if you can’t pull it off as high art you’ll be stuck at Gaslight forever.”

“You won’t, Midge,” and they are looking at each other now. “You won’t get stuck. You’re good.” This is the antithesis of writing in versions, these are two sentences that mean too many different things. She’s two beers in, she won’t go looking for it, but he is. He sees the shape of his words, the things he can’t not say. _You’re good. You won’t get stuck._ All a god damn commentary on how they left things. How they are leaving them behind.

These ruins of them are tangible. He knows by heart the shape of them. 

She keeps looking at him. There is a smile that tugs at her lips. She can’t help it, she believes him.

His chair is starting to feel uncomfortable. He’s too hot and not nearly drunk enough. _Just let yourself be,_ he pleads, _let this be—_ well, whatever this is the equivalent of.

“It’s only four years,” she suddenly starts, eyeing her beer. “I don’t think it’ll matter much.”

He squints at her, unable to set his face into one expression, confused by her cynicism, and suddenly wary. Like she’d said it before, and he didn’t believe it then and he doesn’t believe it now. 

“You think it’s going to begin now, don’t you?”

Midge just nods. “For you too,” she says, soft and deliberate. “You can still have that three under thirty you wouldn’t shut up about.”

But that’s not funny to either of them. She stares at him for a while.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” she says, eyes on his drink now. “You know that. Or you should.” And, surprisingly, that, he believes.

It’s not that much, is it? A lifetime. A whole future, unlived. And they are at its unraveling.

They leave soon after. Lenny holds up the door for her, her coat brushes against him. She lights a cigarette and leans against the wall.

“I think we’ve been here,” she lets out with the smoke. He takes the cigarette from her, raises an eyebrow. 

“Well, not here here,” she continues, “but—” And he can feel it too now: this is like so many of their dates back in the day.

Midge lets out a laugh and takes the cigarette back from him. “I remember it. I remember you kissed me, I remember you—” “I remember it differently.” 

She kissed _him._ That’s the one thing he’s very sure about. 

His hands are in his pockets, secure and covered and shivering. Frankly, this, here, is terrifying. He knows what’s going to happen next.

It’s a matter of seconds, a thing that comes naturally, without any trace of recent history, his mouth is on her mouth. And in an instant she is kissing him back, her hands in his hair, her knee between his legs, her hips pushing into his. All of that he knows, all of that he’ll have to forget one day.

Just like that, he’s out of breath. 

He thinks he knew something would break today. One of them would do it again, the other one following, falling into it easily with grace and resignation. He’d just thought it'd be him, what, with how frighteningly, easily often it was him. And sure, he’s just kissed her, but then he pulls away, stops. 

Midge is the one who leans forward, who takes his hand and places it on her thigh, over her dress: lower, higher, painfully obvious that that is not where she wants it, but she waits for him to break too. She wants them together, like this is something they could still do.

He knows well where to go from here. Knows exactly what she has just asked of him. 

Lenny kinda also knew it four years ago, and he’d already given it his all. And he’d decided it wasn’t enough. It won’t be enough now either, and he doesn’t want to go on like that, giving up and resigning, all dots and interrupted lines, begging for the ease of it to come back.

He doesn’t want to, but he also does. Lenny kisses her again, hands greedy, Midge greedy too.

She pulls away from him, her hand on his arm, and catches a cab in a span of three seconds. 

They are on the backseat, and while he is avoiding closing the door on his coat, she slurs their, _his,_ address. Lenny decides then that the driver can know, anyone can know.

He decides much later that it’s not going to matter.

She’s back at their apartment for the first time since she’d moved out. She doesn’t cut her foot on the glass but she does kick off her shoes by the door and practically jumps into his arms.

He knows everything, it’s been four years of this, it’s not like there is a lot left untouched. Her fingers dig into Lenny’s shoulder, her other hand on his back, usual motions, no second thought to it, a thing they do, a thing they did. 

She leads him to their bed and doesn’t turn on the lights. “Damn it,” Midge hisses as she bumps into a chair. What did she expect, really? The things he hasn’t sold already, he moved around.

It’s like a gruesome thought experiment on exactly how involved they are in each other’s lives. She looks around, walking past the ruins of the abandoned apartment. Lenny sits on the edge of the unmade bed and tries to _let himself be._ Her hands around him burn into his skin, her eyes are on him, watching, waiting for a slip.

It’s a game at this point: pulling each other in, and then rapidly getting out, when it’s suddenly real and dangerous and boring again. It occurs to him that they are just being cruel.

She turns her back to him and he unzips her dress. In the dark room, in the night light, she is all sharp edges. She lies down beside him, one hand on his chest and she starts to undo his buttons at the incredibly awkward angle.

He pushes himself off the bed, takes off his jacket and trousers, while she removes the rest of her clothes.

She gets on top of him, her hair falling in her eyes, her sharp edges obliterated and harmless now. She opens her legs wider.

He thinks about what would happen in the morning. He’d wake up to her and it would be a bad thing, right there. They can’t go back now, they can not. 

She’s told her parents. A new source of embarrassment, tied up to him, again.

He ends up with his hands on her thighs anyway, a collision of sorts, an unavoidable rule of nature. Midge laughs at him, with him, and it feels amazing, how he can make her gasp and he can make her laugh and he can make her come, all in a fucking row.

For a second there he makes an assessment of everything he has left and it’s a fucking lot. He could do this again, he almost wants to.

Lenny’s fingers scratch at the back of her neck, hers on his shoulders. She grasps against him, a certain vulnerability that’s too easy to dismiss. He loses it for a beat, his head tips back, throat bared to her.

Her mouth hot against his neck, she gasps, sudden and violent and says “Let’s not do this.”

_Let’s not._

He laughs against her skin, moves up, so she’s sitting in his lap. This is not the time to change course, and what would she want to undo anyway, it’s not the matter of coming at this point, they are having sex for the first time since they’ve decided not to do it for the rest of their lives—

But that’s not what she is saying. It takes him a minute, but he gets there. And that can’t be what she means. 

A fucking exit, right there. She isn’t even asking, she’s putting it back on the table, the thing she said she’d never want again. _Let’s not sign any more papers._

And suddenly he doesn’t want it anymore.

Well, no. He wants. He wants her, and he wants to turn back time and rearrange his priorities. But what she is offering is different. It’s _come back._ It’s _let’s not._

Her eyes are on him, waiting and dangerous: there is hope in there and he can’t stand it. (How with every moment, the hopeful part grows bigger. How the last thing she asked was “Let’s.”) He won’t be able to kill in a few seconds so he kills it now. “Yeah, no,” he gasps, “no.”

In retrospect, he should have considered it longer, should have taken any time at all.

It was always going to be a lifelong adjustment. Lenny knew that. 

At one point he tried to do what everyone did. He tried to buy her jewelry.

He went to the store people usually went to. He watched the men, flirting away with saleswomen. He stood there and knew he’d be just like them. On the second bracelet or the fourth necklace, he too would make a joke about how his wife overcooks the meat and the lady would answer with a ridiculous “Oh does she,”— And he knew it was all a slippery slope from there.

When Lenny wakes her up in the morning her eyes go wide before she smiles: she’s gotten used to the idea of a life without him. Which reminds him: he’s way behind. He too should put up a facade at least. Shock, embarrassment, the vivid colors of _how could I._ With her in his bed it’s almost bearable to imagine they’ll get over each other soon.

He catches Midge in the doorway. Her green dress looks even nicer than yesterday, the sunlight turning it yellow and then blood red and then green again. “Midge—”

The thing is— When he’d wake up, he thought, maybe he’d be feeling something different.

“I know we are not at the fucking crossroads here, like, I—” It’s terrible, how much he wants her to just keep standing there. His hands wrap around her wrists.

“But do you want to—” It snaps together before he can finish his sentence: last night was amazing. She was drinking beers with someone else and he stole her away. She went to _his_ apartment, and it didn’t matter that he was untidy or poor or infamous. He wants her to stay here, like this, because she’s slipping away into her busy existence, because she’s on her way out. And he said _no_ to her _let’s_ because she wanted it to be real and not the exception.

She doesn’t have the decency to pretend she didn’t get what he was saying. She is being purposefully understanding, trying, accommodating. All in all, the worst thing she could be. Kind.

“You have to move out of here,” she says. She’s looking past him, to the rooms. “We can sell it and split the money, you could buy—”

“I’d end up renting, you know me.” “I do know you.” All of a sudden, there is this intense look on her face. “I can help you find a place-”

_No, Midge. You can not._ No sense in moving out if she imprints on this new hypothetical thing, if she is there too, if she sets foot into his new life, it’s already ruined. 

He’d probably go for something ugly, untouched by everything Midge stands for. And he’d end up renting, because— Because he wants this to be as unstable as it can be for as long as it will hold. 

Lenny expects the gossip to set the record straight, to put what happened into words, however untrue. He braces for impact but it turns out the driver wasn’t a fan of comedy. No one asks him about her.

He figures— as long as her career isn’t launched, as long as she’s not a big deal, as long as her name is Amanda Gleason— he can remain in this mid-state.

But then she goes and changes it. He’s there to witness it, Susie asked it of him: Lenny went back to Gaslight on and introduced, defended, performed. Because Midge had nothing to do with it. It was just Susie, near hitting him with the newspaper, passionately ranting about an Amanda who dared to go against Sophie Lennon. What a terrible name.

What an utterly terrible name.

That night she walks out on stage, black dress, black gloves, bright eyes and sure of herself. And she’s changed her name.

Lenny doesn’t get it. It’s a good sound bite but he’d thought she’d go for something—

See, Mrs. Maisel just doesn’t cut it. He walks out into a cold night, trench coat meeting New York wind, and he thinks it must stand for something. It didn’t feel empty when she said "Maisel." It felt like a joke in itself.

He just doesn’t get it.

He practices the “My first marriage lasted less than my comic career. Yes, in this economy” bit and it doesn’t work, it’s not funny, to him it’s too sad and he can’t quite put words in the right order for it make comedic sense. He lacks the courage to put it into a joke, and it’s not even about courage. It’s a question of will. He doesn’t want to make it funny, even if he knows how to. 

He wants it to be sad, so terribly sad they’d have to get back together to be happy again.

Lenny thinks about how easy it came to her. Two drinks in, he thinks: maybe that’s the point. Maybe it's not about how it takes her an hour and a half to put the last four years into outrageously funny words. Maybe it's that she has to do that, all that. To be busy. To think about it in order to not think about it.

Lenny makes peace with the fact that certain rooms feel empty. Like, sure, the apartment he shared with her is expected to weigh down on him. But then it spreads to the crowded bars and that’s just not fair.

And it’s not like he can come over Weissmans’ household, and ask Rose to please, _please,_ bring out his soon to be ex-wife. He can’t bear to see Abe’s face twisting into what people usually file under disappointment. 

Lenny makes peace, as best he can. Taking out the garbage, he finds a couple of carton boxes. There is an “Annie” written across, and then, lower “Lydia”. He brings the boxes in the apartment, puts them right in the middle of the living room.

He steps away, eyeing the boxes from as much an outsider’s perspective as he can muster. Alone, in bright sunlight, Lenny chuckles. And then he sits down and starts to put together all that he dared not say, confessions and bits and “I hate how Abe looks at me.” 

He wants to say all this on stage and see what happens.

So he doesn’t know what to do when she’s suddenly in the bar during Catskills season. 

He can almost see it: Steiner’s Resort and her mother, trying desperately not to have a divorcee for a daughter. Midge told him that upon hearing the news, Rose defended Lenny to Midge for one delirious moment. And Abe just sat there, very silent and very still.

Midge throws something at him.

She’s noticed him before he noticed her. That’s some kind of a win, he thinks, until he notices the second glass near hers.

It doesn’t even matter. It’s supposed to, he thinks: missing her this much, Lenny should be jealous. But even here, he comes up short. “Did I know you were coming tonight?”

She explains how it’s just one date, punctuating the one. He even meets Benjamin, a perfectly nice guy, a doctor, six feet three or six feet four tucked in a newly pressed suit. Rose must be so proud.

Sitting down, Benjamin puts a hand over her shoulders, and the image of that hand on Midge’s thigh flashes before him. He doesn’t know what to do about that: he just imagines it, it doesn’t nag, it doesn’t hurt. It might even be true, he thinks and doesn’t care.

Lenny gets up and leaves, heading home. He’s got two empty boxes to fill. 

Otherwise, the summer is hot. Scorching pavement, a slow array of days, two packs of cigarettes a day.

Midge goes on tour. Lenny learns it from a man at a bar, a familiar face with no name and blurred features. Susie must be doing something right.

Midge calls one night, a thousand words a minute, a rise of panic in her voice: Susie’s locked in the closet. Lenny can vaguely remember when it used to be a given, that out of everyone she’d call him. 

Half an hour later, he walks into the empty bar with bright yellow lights and turns to the corridor. Midge's standing right in the middle of it, lost, tired, really fucking glad to see him. Her whole face lights up. It’s all very flattering.

One look at Lenny and the manager is all polite lazy smiles. “You should’ve told me you are the _wife,_,” he says, still looking at Lenny as he fumbles for the key and then for Midge’s pay. Lenny vaguely promises to perform with no intention of following through.

Susie pulls angrily at her Ford’s door and pops up on the driver’s seat without a word. Midge watches her drive off as they keep standing near the entrance to the bar.

He offers her a cigarette. “I missed Imogene’s baby shower,” she says at the exact same time he coughs.

She waves her hand at him, a drunken gesture, meant to remind something to the both of them, like it’s enough of an explanation. It is. He knows if he were to wave his hand in a similar fashion, he’d be saying “Midge” and nothing else, her name a stand-in for every place and function and shape she occupies, everything that is irrefutably her and hers. If she doesn't know how to put all that in anything but a wave, that’s okay. He’d like to stay with her like that at least for a while.

He’d like to stay.

“I don’t think I loved you when we got married,” she says. Out of nowhere.

“Ouch,” he raises his hands defensively. “Words can hurt you know.”

“I could hate you, you know.” A cigarette between her lips, Midge takes a drag and catches it between her fingers, her hands shaking. “I wish I could do that.”

Lenny puts her in the taxi and her fingers linger on his and he didn't think he’d still be here by now. This has no right to hurt anymore.

She taps her fingers on the hood of the car, considering. He watches the corner of her mouth, the polite smile on her lips, and when did she start with politeness when it’s just the two of them?

And then she’s done it, whatever bothered her solved and filed away as she gets into her taxi and drives away. No stolen nights.

He gets it later, why her hand on his felt like a punch. He expected it to happen again.

Her name in his mouth used to have a shape and a taste. The second time they had sex, it was his apartment, his empty bottle on the floor, his worn shirt draped over his chair.

He raised his head to meet her eyes. “Midge?”

"Yeah?”

Lenny laughed and his fingernails dug into her thighs and it felt so good. “I think I’m falling in love.”

And she did not say it back and he didn’t even notice because it didn’t fucking matter. 

It’s a rainy night and somewhere in his mind, he knows she has a gig in the neighborhood. When she walks up to him, he suddenly remembers: it was Johnny who told him about a Mrs. Maisel performance, just last Tuesday. Of course, he ended up here today.

Midge talks like they are old friends. Maybe they are. He talks too. It’s embarrassing how empty he feels. She’s so clearly distraught yet still very much here, bubbling, thoughtful, a whole new life out there. He finds himself old just by contrast. 

He tells her about the car he sold. “Well, I think it was my car—” _Maybe it was yours. Sorry I didn’t check._ “Either way, it’s gone.”

She wanted to talk about Imogene ‘s baby and they wouldn’t let her.

His default setting is to put his arms around her, to say that she is not alone, that they are good. He watches his hands as they lay flat on the wooden bar and he watches her when her eyes follow his hands.

Lenny had no idea Imogene had another kid. He doesn’t hear what Midge says next. He wants to say “See? This is why I couldn’t do it.” I can’t be a liability anymore. It’s too much pressure, it’s too much self-loathing and disappointment and fear and I’d rather be fearful of things I actually hate.

He starts talking. Well, he plans to, anyway, clears his throat, goes through the usual motions. “I need to—” She is going to see it anyway. And she shouldn’t have to hear about it from the TV, not from the people they both know, least of all from her parents. Oh God. Her _parents_ are going to see it. “—tell you something.”

He slurs his words, but he’s finally got enough courage to tell her. 

“I wrote a— thing.” And he can’t say anything else. It’s not you. It’s exactly you. It’s a joke. It’s sad how serious I’m being. “You'll see it on TV.”

“Wow.” She sounds impressed. “It's great,” she says, and maybe Abe was right. He had to grow up and quit impressing the wrong people. If she looks at him like this for getting a TV gig, how would she have looked if he got them a semblance of an Upper West Side lifestyle.

He takes a drag of his cigarette and watches her. Midge smiles at him and Lenny thinks, _I did it._

_I’ve convinced you._

He gets up to leave. It’s so much easier than watching her walk away. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

When he half sings half says it on TV, he doesn’t look to her standing ten feet away.

The big deal with this is, he has finally found a way to turn it into a joke. Somewhere around the Akapulko line, he realizes it's also true. It’s honest, it’s terrible and, finally, _finally,_ it’s funny. 

He almost wants to tell The Steve Allen Show viewers that he came back that night. 

He came back to the kitchen. 

He said “No,” he said “Let’s talk about it,” he sat back on his heels near her chair and he told her she couldn’t do this to him, that he’d stop doing it to her, that they had to try and not throw everything away before trying to mend it first.

She pursed her lips and laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> took me long enough. eight fucking months and two damn days


End file.
